Bonnie and Clyde Never Had It This Good

The year is 1932. The stock market crashed just 3 years prior and the Great Depression is in full swing. You and your girlfriend are making ends meet knocking off stores and the occasional bank while guys like John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd are running roughshod through the midwest doing whatever they please and taking home a pretty paycheck for their trouble. Tough times for a young couple starting out, but if you are going to keep up with the Joneses or in this case the Dillingers you had better have a fast car waiting in the shadows. Given the automotive options of the time there is really only one choice for the budding criminal... The Ford V-8. And so the Ford V-8 it was for criminal duo Bonnie and Clyde. Ford produced a handful of body styles in 1932, the rarest of which was the B400 Cabriolet. With all the space of the sedan and the powerful flathead V-8, the B400 went one step further and featured a convertible top for those moonlit nights running from the law.

Only 800 Ford B400s were built and Clyde Barrow went and totaled his while running from the cops, so when Ed and Linda Woody decided to start looking for a B400 of their own the odds were stacked against them form the beginning. In fact it took Ed all of 20 years to find the car you see before you and it certainly didn't show as well as it does today.
'32 Ford B400 Roadster 2017 Tom Leigh-0064-Edit

With only 25-30 of these cars still in existence this car does a fantastic job of staying true to the spirit of the time period while also adding subtle details that make it decidedly custom. From the stance and wheel/tire combo to the H&H Flathead motor and custom gauge cluster inside the original wood dash, custom touches abound, but all of them are perfectly understated on this beautiful resto-custom.

While the engine was built by H&H Flathead and Bob McKernon handled the upholstery and top, the rest of the car was restored to it's current glory over the course of 4 years by Ed himself. The body work and paint look like you could dive straight into it and rightfully so since Ed was in the collision repair business in California before retiring in 2011.
'32 Ford B400 Roadster 2017 Tom Leigh-0055-Edit

For our photo shoot Ed and Linda were gracious enough to follow us to different spots up and down the Colorado River to shoot photos and video to promote an upcoming run put on by the Havasu Deuces car club based out of Lake Havasu City, AZ. While we cruised along from location to location and watched Ed and Linda enjoying the crisp desert air wafting through the open top and the rumble of the flathead under the hood it was hard not to imagine Clyde at the wheel and Bonnie by his side as they sped down some meandering midwestern back road on their way to their next fateful adventure.
'32 Ford B400 Roadster 2017 Tom Leigh-9847-Edit

While Ed and Linda have had many adventures in the car they assure me that all of them were of the legal variety and didn't involve any banks or police chases, although Bonnie and Clyde would have done well to have this little car underfoot in such an occasion.
'32 Ford B400 Roadster 2017 Tom Leigh-9997-Edit

Thank you to Ed and Linda for giving us the opportunity to shoot this amazing car and to Joe and Teresa Mitchell for putting us in touch! If you love 32 Fords and would like to check out their run in March head over to HavasuDeuces.com for more information!